Source Tree is a nightmare

[TacticalGoldfish]

I’ve spent half the day trying to get this horrible program working, and I’m still not sure if it’s behaving properly, whether all of its components installed correctly, if it’s properly registered/linked to my Bitbucket account, or if I accidentally found and installed some malware look-alike in my desparate search for solutions online.

First it wouldn’t register during setup, preventing me from completing the installation.
Then I uninstalled and re-installed several times, and it kept bugging out.
I tried older archived versions of it, all of them messed up.
Then I tried uninstalling it again and using a version I found in their forums, that didn’t work either.
I uninstalled that and launched the original installer, but this time it actually launched the UI without even prompting me with a setup screen, as if it was already installed. I have no idea if this thing is registered or not.
I tried to make a repo, but it said that I have to enable Git
I try to enable Git, and it errors out saying that portable git .7z file is missing
I manually set up Git for windows and link source tree to it
It almost seems right, but I have no idea where it’s installed. If I uninstall it, it seems to disappear, but new installation doesn’t go through the setup steps - it just launches Sourcetree like it was never uninstalled. I feel like my computer’s been infected with a parasite that I can’t get rid of.

This thing is terrifying and I hope that I find a way to eventually purge it from my system. I’ll try using one of the other VCS options that were listed, but so far my experience with VCS feels like a waking nightmare. I hate it.

[topdog]

Sorry you’re having these kinds of issues with it. I don’t expect SourceTree to not have issues, but it seems you’ve had a more rough start with it than it should have been.

Regarding where it installs; SourceTree likes to live in your local app data folders.

If you open a command prompt and do: dir %localappdata%\sourcetree

That should list where it installs each version (in different sub folders), and may go some way to explain why attempting to reinstall a version again just launches it, as that folder and its contents are probably still there.

So I suspect the cleanest uninstall would be to go into Control Panel > Programs and remove everything, then find and remove that Sourcetree folder above, and also if you must, get rid of %appdata%\Atlassian\Sourcetree too (where there’s usually only 1 file for remembering your various connected account details).

Then at least you should be able to start from a fairly clean sheet and reinstall again as if new.

You can also - and I would suggest - giving some other GUI git clients a try. SourceTree is good because: it’s free, it’s feature rich, it’s feature current. It’s bad because for whatever reason, Atlassian’s QA department either does a poor job with this product or doesn’t exist at all.

Alternatives to try include Fork or GitKraken, although they’re both under a kind of “Freemium” model (where Fork’s features are unlimited with some paywall nags, and GitKraken’s are limited unless you upgrade your level).

For me personally, I use both Sourcetree and Fork for this kind of work.

Not recommended client: Github Desktop

Whilst it is reliable at what it does, it’s also feature lacking to the point of being frustrating or unusable because of it and has a clunky UI - somewhat sadly given GitHub itself is a premium quality system.

[TacticalGoldfish]

@topdog

Alternatives to try include Fork or GitKraken, although they’re both under a kind of “Freemium” model (where Fork’s features are unlimited with some paywall nags, and GitKraken’s are limited unless you upgrade your level).

For me personally, I use both Sourcetree and Fork for this kind of work.

Thank you very much for the advice, I appreciate the reply. Unfortunately uninstalling via control panel doesn’t actually uninstall it. I get the behaviour as described in the OP. Also, I already tried to delete the files in AppData previously, both the sourcetree and atlassian; the latter got deleted, but the sourcetree folder prevented me from deleting it and I gave up.

After a good night’s sleep, I went back at it and started working through it. It seems that this scuffed installation gets the job done for the time being, at least when it comes to local repositories. I’ll keep using it while I do the rest of the courses, but I’ll check out Fork later, so thanks for that advice.